Related papers: E. coli chemotaxis is information-limited
Chemical gradients can be used by a particle to determine its position. This \textit{positional information} is of crucial importance, for example in developmental biology in the formation of patterns in an embryo. The central goal of this…
Information is a key concept in evolutionary biology. Information is stored in biological organism's genomes, and used to generate the organism as well as to maintain and control it. Information is also "that which evolves". When a…
Motivated by the observation of non-exponential run-time distributions of bacterial swimmers, we propose a minimal phenomenological model for taxis of active particles whose motion is controlled by an internal clock. The ticking of the…
Elucidating the architecture and dynamics of large scale genetic regulatory networks of cells is an important goal in systems biology. We study the system level dynamical properties of the genetic network of Escherichia coli that regulates…
The ubiquity of information transmission via molecular communication between cells is comprehensively documented on Earth; this phenomenon might even have played a vital role in the origin(s) and early evolution of life. Motivated by these…
In this paper the first equation within a class of well known chemotaxis systems is derived as a hydrodynamic limit from a stochastic interacting many particle system on the lattice. The cells are assumed to interact with attractive…
Biological cells are able to accurately sense chemicals with receptors at their surfaces, allowing cells to move towards sources of attractant and away from sources of repellent. The accuracy of sensing chemical concentration is ultimately…
We study the average asymptotic growth rate of cells in randomly fluctuating environments, with multiple viable phenotypes per environment. We show that any information processing strategy has an asymptotic growth rate, which is the sum of:…
Biological and living systems process information across spatiotemporal scales, exhibiting the hallmark ability to constantly modulate their behavior to ever-changing and complex environments. In the presence of repeated stimuli, a…
Colour information not only helps sustain the survival of animal species by guiding sexual selection and foraging behaviour, but also is an important factor in the cultural and technological development of our own species. This is…
We characterize the full spatiotemporal gait of populations of swimming {\it Escherichia coli} using renewal processes to analyze the measurements of intermediate scattering functions. This allows us to demonstrate quantitatively how the…
The metabolic network plays a crucial role in regulating bacterial metabolism and growth, but it is subject to inherent molecular stochasticity. Previous studies have utilized flux balance analysis and the maximum entropy method to predict…
Many motile biological cells navigate along concentration gradients of signaling molecules: This chemotaxis guides for instance sperm cells from marine invertebrates, which have to find egg cells in the ocean. While chemotaxis has been…
Cells are constantly exposed to diverse stimuli-chemical, mechanical, or electrical-that guide their movement. In physiological conditions, these signals often overlap, as seen during infections, where neutrophils and dendritic cells…
Understanding the system level adaptive changes taking place in an organism in response to variations in the environment is a key issue of contemporary biology. Current modeling approaches such as the constraint-based flux balance analyses…
The process of evolution by natural selection leads to phenotypes of increasing fitness. For cellular chemical reaction networks, this means optimising a variety of fitness functions such as robustness, precision, or sensitivity to external…
Navigation up a sensory gradient is one of the simplest behaviours, and the simplest strategy is run and tumble. But some organisms use other strategies, such as reversing direction or turning by some angle. Here we ask what drives the…
Organisms have evolved immune systems that can counter pathogenic threats. The adaptive immune system in vertebrates consists of a diverse repertoire of immune receptors that can dynamically reorganize to specifically target the…
Despite being optimized, the information processing of biological organisms exhibits significant variability in its complexity and capability. One potential source of this diversity is the limitation of resources required for information…
The ability of organisms to accurately sense their environment and respond accordingly is critical for evolutionary success. However, exactly how the sensory ability influences fitness is a topic of active research, while the necessity of a…